Inspired by the “If you have only $100 to start a blog” post, I decided to create a new one titled “The $100 Blog” for people who want to kickstart their new blog with some basic investments to make it better.

“The $100 Blog” (Investments) $100 = ₹6508.52

1. Domain Name:

A ‘good’ domain name is very essential for your blog. So, kindly brainstorm for days, even weeks, and finalize a good one for your blog aka brand. If you are ready with a ‘.com’ domain name, then I would suggest ‘GoDaddy’ or ‘Google Domains’ to register that. But, since we don’t have any promo codes (discount codes) for ‘Google Domains’, I would prefer to use GoDaddy at the moment, it’s equally good, so don’t worry about anything.

You can use these GoDaddy or BigRock promo code and register a ‘.com’ domain name for your blog. Make sure it’s unique and it represents your niche. We picked MoviesDrop.com for our blog about Movies. I wouldn’t suggest you grab a domain name which represents an existing company, say ‘WhatsAppStatus.com’ or ‘AndroidTutorials.com’, even if you find available ones, I would suggest you skip it. So, pick a unique one, think thrice and register it. You can make use of domain discounts and grab .org, .net and .in extensions if possible as well.

2. Web Hosting:

Okay, so I’m assuming you got your desired domain name now. Congrats! Now, it’s time to register your web hosting account. If you already had a blog on Blogger.com or WordPress.com, then you don’t need to worry, you can migrate the content easily and do redirection. Consider your ‘Web Hosting’ server as your Computer hard drive or even your phone’s storage. Here we’ll install something called “WordPress”, which acts as a medium for us to access our blog and publish content.

Since your blog is new, you don’t have to invest much for the hosting. You can pick the basic ‘Shared Hosting’ for this. We have Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers, so make use of that and register your web hosting account for cheap. Grab the yearly plan. I would suggest SiteGround, BaseZap, and DigitalOcean (If you are technically strong or if you have someone to manage your server).

3. G Suite Email Address:

I would suggest you have two sets of email addresses. One like “slashsquare@gmail.com” and another one like “pradeep@slashsquare.org”. You can use the former for all the backend stuff and you can use the latter for all the communication stuff. When you email someone with ‘pradeep@slashsquare.org’, they can easily understand that ‘Pradeep’ is someone from the organization ‘Slashsquare.org’, it’s very clear. To get an email address like this, you can grab G Suite plan, it’s not expensive, you can select the yearly plan and make the most out of this. If you don’t have enough budget for this, then you can try Zoho Mail too.

4. Logo Design:

People often ask me, is this necessary Pradeep, I mean why would anyone invest money for a logo initially. I kinda agree with them, it might sound unnecessary, but hey, “Your blog with a good logo” (vs) “Your blog with a normal logo”, I’m pretty sure you might be happy with a normal one, but your readers, if you want your ‘brand name’ or ‘brand image’ to be established on their minds, then you should definitely invest and grab one! Most of our blog logos are done by 7Span, you can check with them or you know any other sources like Fiverr you can check there too.

5. Premium WordPress Plugins:

“Why should I invest in a premium plugin and not in a premium theme?” - Well, your readers want to read your content, so as long as your blog has a decent theme with a good loading speed, it’s more than enough. I wouldn’t suggest you invest your money in a premium theme initially. It’s worth investing, but not at the moment.

You don’t need to buy all the WordPress plugins mentioned here, just pick the one you think that’ll help your blog’s growth.

For some of us, even me, $100 is a big deal and you might be skeptical about investing, but I can assure you if you want to make money, then you badly need to spend/invest money too. Let us know if you have any queries, or if you have any other suggestions, let us know that too. Thank you.